Kielce pogrom in Poland: 80th anniversary of 1946 massacre

Just over a year after World War II ended, a mob in the Polish city of Kielce killed around 40 Jews, some of them Holocaust survivors. A lie about ritual child murder escalated the violence.

Eighty years ago, the city of Kielce in southern Poland was the scene of the worst pogrom in postwar Polish history. In 1946, just 14 months after the allies' victory over Nazi Germany and the end of the World War II, an estimated 40 Jewish Holocaust survivors were robbed, beaten and brutally murdered by their neighbors.

On the morning of July 4, 1946, an angry mob gathered in front of what was known as the "Jewish House" at 7 Planty Street, the headquarters of several Jewish aid organizations. The two-story building also served as temporary accommodation for over 150 Jews who had survived the Nazi regime, by hiding in Poland or by going into exile in the Soviet Union. These traumatized individuals were trying to build new lives in Poland or planning to emigrate to Palestine.

"Death to the Jews!" the mob shouted as they gathered in front of the building, armed with stones and clubs.

A rumor was spreading around the town: That the Jews had kidnapped and murdered Christian children. A civic militia was sent to the house and they told others they were going to look for children, which only incited the crowd further.

Then, instead of protecting the people inside the house, militia members and soldiers shot at the Jews inside and dragged others out to where the crowd could beat them, sometimes to death. Men and women were thrown from second-floor balconies.

"The soldiers started shooting, but not at the attackers, at us," Chil Alpert, who survived the pogrom, later testified. "The soldiers shot at our windows. Inside the house, the military murdered the Jews. They initially shot through the doors, then forced their way in, shooting at people, throwing the victims into the crowd where they were beaten to death."

A child's lie

The massacre was triggered by a young boy who fabricated a story to avoid getting into trouble. Henryk Blaszczyk, who was either eight or nine at the time, had visited another village near Kielce but didn't tell his parents and was gone for two days. His parents reported him missing.

To avoid getting into trouble, Blaszczyk said he had been lured into a trap by a Jew and held captive in a basement with other Polish children.

After his father reported the incident at the nearest police station, the boy went on a walk with police officers and identified a Jewish man, a resident of the house on Planty Street, as the alleged kidnapper. The child even pointed out the "Jewish House" as the place he was held captive, although later it became clear that could not have been true. The house does not have a basement.

A second wave of violence erupted in the early afternoon after the rumor of the murder of children reached workers at the Ludwikow metalworks in Kielce. Several hundred workers then joined the pogrom, armed with their tools.

The violence spread to other parts of the city too. Jews at the train station or on trains were also attacked. And it wasn't until the later afternoon, when more soldiers were called in to quell the violence, that the killing and beating ended and survivors were taken to safety.

How many people died?

The exact number of deaths is not clear.

Polish state research institute, the Institute of National Remembrance, says that 37 Jews died that day. According to the institute, three Polish Catholics, including the caretaker from the house on Planty Str., also died. They had stood up for those under attack.

Meanwhile the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, or POLIN, in Warsaw, says that "at least 40 Jews were killed in the pogrom, along with two Poles who tried to defend them." 

The museum also notes that the pogrom caused "a widespread panic" in the Jewish community in Poland and a wave of emigration that saw around 100,000 people leave the country, including to Germany. 

Polish historians say that what happened in Kielce was not an isolated incident either. After the country was liberated from the Nazis, anti-Jewish riots broke out, including in Krakow. Almost everywhere that they did, it was the rumor that Christian children had been murdered by Jews that started the violence.

Krakow historian Julian Kwiek documented approximately 1,100 murders of Jews between 1944 and the end of 1947. "Violence against Jews was a widespread phenomenon," Kwiek writes in his book "We Don't Want Jews in Our Place. Hostility Towards Jews in 1944-1947."

Polish cultural anthropologist Joanna Tokarska-Bakir says that the "blood libel" myth was revived after World War II and that this was a major cause of the various pogroms. But, she adds, disputes over property were also a driver of antipathy towards Jews, who returned home after the war and wanted their houses and apartments back.

Not a communist plot

"This met with resistance from the new Polish owners, who had already been living there for three years and who considered them their property," the historian said during a discussion at POLIN in late June this year.

Back in Kielce in 1946, the authorities, who had lost control of the town for hours, tried to get the upper hand by putting on a trial swiftly. Just under a week after the pogrom took place, nine defendants were found guilty, sentenced to death and executed.

For many years afterwards the pogrom in Kielce was something of a taboo subject. Censorship by the Communist authorities prevented much research or any publications around the topic.

In more recent years though, the Institute of National Remembrance has not found any evidence to support a theory that the Kielce pogrom was provoked by communist or Soviet intelligence agencies and it closed an investigation into the incident in 2006. The institute's researchers concluded that the pogrom was the result of something of a "spontaneous reaction" in the mob, fueled by existing prejudices.

This article was originally written in German.